State Quits Rate Reaches Record High Led by Growth in Leisure and Hospitality
Today’s state JOLTS report, which captures the extent to which labor market conditions differ across the country, shows one unifying sign – the Great Resignation is a national trend, and people are looking for better opportunities regardless of their job market. Here are three key takeaways:
1
With 7.1% of the workforce quitting their jobs in one month, Hawaii is leading the way in the Great Resignation. The state’s quits rate is more than double the current national rate of 3.0%, which is a record high.
• Hawaii, Montana, and Nevada are at the forefront of the Great Resignation with the highest quits rates in the country. Hawaii’s quits rate of 7.1% is the highest rate seen in any state on record.
• Hawaii and Nevada saw the steepest job losses during the pandemic, due to the importance of tourism and the large share of employment in leisure and hospitality. Those industries are now rapidly restaffing, creating opportunity both for unemployed people and for currently employed job seekers. • Nevada has the lowest gap between its job openings and hires rates, which suggests that time-to-hire is particularly rapid in the state, with employers able to fill vacancies more quickly than elsewhere.
• Montana has more than 2 job openings per unemployed person, putting substantial bargaining power in job seekers’ hands. The abundance of opportunities available in Montana is encouraging people to leave their jobs for better ones.
2
Nebraska made history last month with the lowest state jobless rate ever recorded, at 1.9%. Nebraska’s quits rate is also low, making the pool of employed job seekers small. Because of this, the city of North Platte, NE is offering people up to $5,000 to move there.
• Nebraska has more than 3 job openings per unemployed person – the highest ratio in the country.
• Although businesses have reported difficulty filling vacancies nationwide, employers in Nebraska face the steepest odds. That is because there are 69K job openings but only 19.3K unemployed people in the state.
Unemployed people in Nebraska have more options and face less competition in the current job market—not only due to a low unemployment rate, but also because of a relatively low quits rate. These combined factors benefit Nebraskans because they face little competition from other unemployed people, as well as from employed job seekers.
3
Hires are lagging behind job openings most dramatically on the east coast, where high
• The hires rates in Massachusetts, West Virginia, and Maryland have not caught up with their job openings rates in the current labor market. Although Massachusetts and West Virginia have some of the highest job openings rates in the country, ranking in the top 4, they nevertheless have the widest gaps between openings and hires, an indication of slower hiring processes than in the rest of the country.